The move to pun­ish Acosta by re­mov­ing his ac­cess to the White House is be­lieved to be un­prece­dented. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion barred an­other CNN re­porter from at­tend­ing an open me­dia event in July but un­til now has not gone as far as re­mov­ing a cre­den­tial, known as a "hard pass," which en­ables jour­nal­ists to en­ter the White House grounds.

Fol­low­ing a lengthy and tense ver­bal back-and-forth, in which Trump at one point started to stray from his lectern and he called Acosta "a rude, ter­ri­ble per­son," a fe­male White House in­tern tried to take the mi­cro­phone from Acosta.